So Cal Arts & Entertainment

Can’t make it to New York City this week? Lucky for us, the Philharmonic Society is bringing The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to Orange County. And Wednesday evening’s (Dec. 14) offering at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa is no ordinary...

Warren Oates and Corey Allen in “Private Property” (1960) It’s easy to see how a film like “Private Property” (1960) fell through the cracks, going almost unnoticed on its original release and promptly disappearing. After all, few people had heard of writer-director...

Mikhailovsky Ballet in “Le Corsaire” “Le Corsaire,” a tale of romance between a pirate and a slave girl, is an age-old staple of the ballet repertoire. It was inspired not by the Verdi opera of the same name but a poem written by Lord Byron in 1814. The Mikhailovsky...

Mabel Normand & Mack Sennett, with Edgar Kennedy (3rd row left), in a 1913 film. “The most important thing in my life was a girl,” film comedy pioneer Mack Sennett truthfully observed in his myth-filled autobiography. Sadly, the girl’s own legacy has been largely...

Annika Marks and Giovanni Adams in “The Model Apartment.” Photo by Jeff Lorch Photography. Donald Margulies may be one of our best contemporary playwrights, but he had to start somewhere. Among his earliest efforts is “The Model Apartment,” now playing in a revival at...

Montae Russell and Matthew Boston in SCR's District Merchants by Aaron Posner. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. Don’t know much about Shakespeare? Steer away from productions and adaptations of his plays for fear you won’t understand them? Aaron Posner’s “District...

Blake Ellis & Nick Searcy in “Billy & Ray.” Photo by Ed Krieger. What would it be like if you could go back in time and watch Billy Wilder’s classic seriocomic film noir, “Double Indemnity,” in the making? Not on the set, mind you, but in the director’s office at...

Karen Jean Olds and Ned Liebl in “Seminar.” What does a writer do when she has something outrageous to say? If she’s Theresa Rebeck, she might put it in somebody else’s mouth and put that somebody center stage. As in “Seminar,” now careening across the Cripe Stage of...

The cast of Ma Rainey; photo by Craig Schwartz. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” by August Wilson (at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. through Oct. 16) is ostensibly about the titular personality known as “the mother of the blues” and the small group of jazz musicians who...